In support of the Ukrainian opposition party, which appears to have had the election stolen from them. The opposition party’s take on the results is backed by several nations, including Poland, Canada, and the United States, and basically the entire EU.

In light of this, today, I wore the only orange shirt I have:

Best of luck to Ukraine. Hang in there.

I took Canada’s Skilled Worker Self-Assessment and scored a 62, five points shy of the 67 points required by Canadian immigration. This is done under the assumption I’d graduate before moving, and no Canadian company had offered me a job. With a job offer, I have a 77 and I’m in. With a Masters’ or Ph.D. degree, but no job offer, I have a 67 and could get in.

Canadian companies hiring aerospace engineers and offering me more money than any American company? You know where to find me.

Do realize it would have to be a lot more money. It’s damned cold up there.

(Via Mr. Donovan at Arrgh!)

It looks like I’m going to transition over to a paid hosting solution. I’ve used up all my available space on Prism, and this particular plan runs $3.00/mo. for 300 MB of space and 15 GB/mo. of transfer. Should be plenty, unless I’m suddenly discovered by Glenn Reynolds.

This also gives me the opportunity to switch over to WordPress for my blog. I’ve been using it quite successfully for the past several months on the Georgia Tech AIAA website, and I like its flexibility and posting speed (no rebuilds!) Blogger is a wonderful service, but I’ll be able to do a lot of very cool things that Blogger just can’t handle easily or at all.

Right now this exists on a test site, but eventually this will become http://patrick.greentaperacing.us/blog/ and the site on Prism will be retired. It’s primarily a matter of placing all the photos in some better management system, possibly Coppermine, another piece of software I’m using on the AIAA page, and need to get better at modifying [UPDATE: Or Pictorialis]; then fixing all the old posts. Old content from The Eventuate and Desideratum will remain on Prism for the time being.

Oh yeah, categorizing the old imported posts. That may or may not happen.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 has been released. See that link? It’s screaming, “click me and download what you see there, for it is good!” Do it. DO IT NOW!

I’m currently waiting on a few more extensions to get updated, but the important ones upgraded fine from the Preview Release, notably, All-in-One Gestures, Web Developer Toolbar, and the really cool Google Preview. The only not-yet-updated favorite is Compact Menu, and it will be nice to have the BugMeNot extension up-to-date.

I hate election season; that said, I wish to release this statement:

There’s no need to leave the country just because Bush won. We…well, okay, I won’t speak for everyone. But at least I still respect (most of) you. I believe that reasonable people can disagree. I just hope to see a return to discussing facts and reason over rumor and emotion.

Having just watched Kerry’s concession speech, I think it’s worth noting that he seemed…well, confident. I suppose that the extremests who supported Kerry only because they couldn’t support Dean won’t understand why that is, but I hope that the rest of the liberals in the audience see that and know that there is no coming apocalypse. The world continues to spin, the sun continues to burn, the squirrels still leave acorns strewn about campus.

Incidentally, did anyone else notice that Bush mentioned “reform the outdated tax code” (or words to that effect) in his acceptance speech? He can raise himself in my eyes from “pretty good guy” to “personal hero” status if he does in fact successfully pull that off. “Minor deity” is still available if he simultaneously reduces the deficit (but that seems extremely unlikely).

As both candidates closed: God Bless America.